What Cones Can't Do
Anyone who has spent time working highway shoulders knows the equation. You set up your taper. You put out your signs. You put on your vest. And then you work — with 70 mph traffic thirty feet behind you, trusting that every driver coming down that lane sees your setup and reacts in time.
Most do. The ones who don't are looking at a phone, or blinded by sun glare, or simply don't register the transition until they're already in your zone. By that point, no amount of traffic control equipment changes what happens next. The cone goes down. If someone is in the wrong place, they don't walk away.
Why LiDAR. Why This System.
Randy looked at every technology available: radar, ultrasonic, camera-based systems, pneumatic tubes. The problem with all of them was either false alarm rates, dependence on visibility conditions, or complexity that required a crew of technicians to deploy.
LiDAR solved all three. It emits its own light, so darkness and weather are irrelevant. It provides precise 3D object detection, so vehicle-sized intrusions are distinguished from wind-blown debris. And the filtering logic can be tuned so tightly that every alarm your crew hears is a confirmed threat — not a gust of wind, not a piece of equipment, not a bird.
The result was OVERWATCH: a system that deploys in under 3 minutes, operates autonomously, resets automatically, and fires a 125 dB alarm the instant a vehicle-sized object crosses the defined barrier. No technicians. No calibration crew. One person, one case, and a work zone that now has an active detection layer.
Where We Are Now
OVERWATCH is U.S. patented, listed on the FDOT Approved Products List, and registered with DOTs across Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas. Alpha Safenet is a founder-led company — there is no sales team, no distribution layer, no corporate structure between the person who built the system and the person who needs it.
Randy still answers every call. He still goes on-site for demos. He still handles every procurement inquiry directly. That will not change as the company grows — because the mission is protecting the crews who keep America's roads moving, and that's personal.